


Water and Yeast and Flour

by nimblermortal



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Bread, Gen, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26762257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: When they've dropped Nile off with her family, Nicolò bakes bread.Or, I wanted an excuse to write a fic with a recipe at the end, and someone gave it to me.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 90





	1. The Fic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ICryYouMercy (TrafalgarsLaw)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrafalgarsLaw/gifts).



The urge was growing in Nicolò’s fingers on the plane to Chicago, but it wasn’t until he was looking through Nile’s mother’s kitchen cabinets that Nicolò recognized it for the bread craving it was. He always baked when they were in a new place - bread was how you knew someone lived somewhere - but he also baked for understanding his life and others’, and between that and… well, he couldn’t say he disliked the contents of the Freeman kitchen, he _adored_ modern convenience and salt and fat and protein and immigrant cuisine, and would gladly wax rhapsodic about Ragu and instant ramen if given half a chance and his pick of languages to do it in - but the Freeman kitchen was very clearly that of a single mother who worked nights, and Nicolò needed food that took work.

So as they were walking down the front steps of Nile’s house, Nicolò turned to Yusuf and said, “I’ll take watch if you’ll -“

“Bread? On it, love,” said Yusuf. Now that they weren’t performing, they were back to their own pidgin of Ligurian, Arabic, and Latin - as if the pidgin could form a wall between them and the absence of Liber.

“You found us a place with a kitchen?”

Yusuf only answered that one with a wounded look, as if he would bed Nicolò down for two weeks without a kitchen. But he didn’t peel off immediately to hunt down whatever cooking store he had searched up. Most of Yusuf’s cut from jobs went to kitchen goods; most of Nicolò’s went to art supplies. Treasures they brought back to the other as if they needed to prove their affection still, abandoned at each successive safehouse. The attraction of Goussainville was - had been - the cups with chips in them, the crack down Nicolò’s favorite mixing bowl. Things they had had long enough to damage. Things Nicolò did not want to go back to now.

“It’s vacation,” said Yusuf. “Rest, relax.”

“We just had a year of vacation,” Nicolò complained. “I want to bake bread.”

“Very well,” said Yusuf, and then he did disappear into the crowd. Nicolò tried not to watch him go; it would have been suspicious, while Yusuf was disappearing.

He came back, as he always did on such ventures, while Nicolò was rearranging the contents of the kitchen they’d rented. (The spatulas had been across the kitchen from the stove, far enough that even Nicolò could not reach them one-handed. It was an abomination, and someone would spend decades in Purgatory for this.)

“I brought you a gun,” he said, which was not how he announced it when he had obtained a real gun for Nicolò. Nicolò pursed his lips faintly in question, and Yusuf laughed, trying to balance all of the bags he’d brought back on the counter.

“There,” he said when he was done, fishing around in one, and brought out a yellow thing like a construction toy. “It fires lasers.”

“That is the shortest shotgun I have ever seen,” Nicolò said solemnly, and took it from him. There was a screen at the back that stayed obstinately blank as Nicolò swept the room with it, trigger finger resting alongside the body of the gun since he had no intention of shooting anyone just yet. There was also a tag, but reading that would have been cheating. With a frown, he pointed it at his foot and squeezed the trigger. The screen lit up at around ninety. When he fired aimlessly into the room, it dropped by twenty.

He looked up. Yusuf was watching him with interest and smothered laughter. Nicolò shot him right between the eyes.

“Ninety nine,” he declared on inspection. “Do you want to lay down and I’ll get you some tea for your fever? What is the function of this object?”

“It tells you whether things are done cooking without having to pierce it with needles or fumble it out and juggle it while you knock on the crust or open the oven door and have your soufflé fall.”

“Hm,” said Nicolò speculatively, and left it on the counter where he would remember to try it later and decide what he thought of it, or determine its range and accuracy. Nile would probably agree to standing by the stove and keeping a pot of water just barely boiling so he could calibrate the accuracy at varying distances, but she was busy doing something with her brother that involved one of those televisor screens and a lot of leaning and screaming at each other. “What else did you bring me?”

“Just your usual,” Yusuf replied, pulling things out of bags and finding cupboard space for them. After this many years, he could put them where Nicolò would look for them in any kitchen.

When Nicolò brought out a pan and started pouring milk into it, Yusuf frowned. “Are you not planning to sleep tonight?” he asked. Nicolò shrugged. It was dark outside already.  
“I’ll keep watch,” he said, and gestured to the far end of the counter, where neither of them had let any bags come close to the little pink walkie-talkie Nile had leant them when she realized burner phones were not going to cut it for their twenty-four-hour surveillance plan.

“I’ll be cold without you,” Yusuf warned him.

“You’ve been cold before,” said Nicolò. He stirred the milk. Heat it slow, for sweetness. He had all the time in the world. “Go to bed. It’s not necessary for both of us to be tired tomorrow.”

Yusuf hummed thoughtfully and kicked at his own heel. He was thinking about luring Nicolò into bed, what tricks he might apply to convince Nicolò to sleep instead of starting bread to rise. Nicolò hooked a foot lovingly around his ankle and swept. Yusuf unthinkingly shifted his weight and lifted the foot out of the way.

“I’m not upset. Just antsy. Let me make this place home,” Nicolò said. He didn’t sweep Yusuf unless both of them were feeling safe. It had become an unspoken rule of their relationship, a declaration of honesty that, honestly, reflected what they had seen from Andromache and Quynh. When they had been hoping for something half so honest for themselves.

Yusuf registered his protest by making calming mint tea for the both of them while Nicolò emptied grains into containers, and leaving the tea where Nicolò would drink it. The tea had been a recent ritual, only a couple of hundred years old, something Yusuf clung to to attach him to a regional identity that had superseded what he had grown up in. Nicolò had quietly adopted it as a way of laying claim to his identity as Yusuf’s husband. He let Yusuf make it this time, and made a point of sipping it before Yusuf left the room.

And then he was alone with the kitchen, to make this stopping-place his. He stretched, hands overhead and then locked behind to pull first up, then down. Then he got busy.

The milk was soaking over oatmeal - it would probably be softer than he liked, since he’d been so eager to get started, to signal what he was doing. That was all right, it just gave the bread more grain anyway. The yeast didn’t really need proofing, but he set it to do so in the little oven-proof dish Yusuf had brought, because he liked proofing yeast. After this bread was done, he’d take a little malt from the still and start a yeast bath in that dish, and Liber would yell at him for interfering with the fermentation, and - no, Liber wouldn’t yell at him for anything at all, any time soon.

He couldn’t say prayers for anyone else, or grant them redemption with a wave of his hand. Perhaps at one point he had been qualified to offer absolution, but there were things for which absolution was not satisfactory, for any party. God was compassionate, was merciful, and the confessional was about one’s own forgiveness, not His.

So he took a deep breath and looked for the lard Yusuf had brought him. It was some local vegetable shortening that he had seen in Nile’s mother’s kitchen, that came out white as a meringue but tacky. Another joke or gift from Yusuf, who had listened to Nicolò’s steady muttered encomium on what he had found in that kitchen, the wonders of modern technology, pasta sauce that came in a jar and could be kept at room temperature indefinitely and pasta that set next to it on the shelf and pre-cooked sausages… but he was getting distracted. He poked the lard suspiciously, but it seemed to be all right, and the label promised him it was shortening.

So he melted that over the stove, and at least it greased the measuring cup sufficiently that the honey didn’t stick. Water, beaten eggs, salt - salt was so incredibly available these days, it was as much a miracle as the aluminum foil that sat quietly in its rolled box. To think, high-purity aluminum used as a disposable wrapper! Nicolò remembered being awed by the stories of Napoleon permitting his valued guests to eat off aluminum dishes, while the lower benches had to satisfy themselves with golden tableware. Liber had complained for years after he heard that story, and refused to say whether it was because he’d never been offered so much as silverware.

Much safer, sturdier, more _familiar_ than any of these was the wooden spoon to mix it with. Classic things. Yusuf liked to bring him gadgets - he still needed to play with that laser gun - but Nicolò was… all right, stodgier. He liked things he could understand. He’d driven Andromache crazy by taking apart the first several guns she brought them, until she gave up and apprenticed him to a gunsmith and he learned to make gunpowder and firing mechanisms and bullets, and eventually decided he knew enough to understand how to fire one. And then had gone through the whole process again when people started making them with rifling, or repeaters.

Bread was meditative, was all. It brought back memories. Nicolò had baked a lot of bread, and the smells, even with strange modern flours and ingredients, even the Saxon bread he was making, were familiar and evocative. The stuff in his bowl was a dense, oily liquid, technically homogeneous but the heavier honey wanting to precipitate out of it. He started combining bowls - milk and oats first, then the proofed yeast, and finally flours.

That was where it started to get good, where it really started to feel like baking bread. There was a lot of mixing involved, a lot of gradually adding more flour, wheat and white together. That was another strange thing, the way dark flour was valued these days, when throughout his history the white had been prized and saved for lords, the value in the lightness of the crumb. That was home bread for Nicolò, the way flat breads were home for Yusuf. And yet when he came to a new place, he strayed over the border toward the Germanic peoples, the grains darker and more varied, and came up with… this. Strangely Anglo-Saxon bread. Well. It was a joy to knead.

The kneading only took a few minutes - eight, or ten. Enough to feel it in the outsides of his arms and start wondering how long it would take, before the dough went stretchy and elastic and the bubbles started to form under the outer edge. That was impossible to explain, the texture of bread when it began to take in air and breath, when it became not just dough but something with skin, something alive. For all the life he had taken, he could give life to this.

Yusuf had brought him a special bowl just for rising bread. It was another silly contraption, but a classic one this time; Yusuf had decided that Nicolò must always have a bowl for raising bread. Nicolò spread a bit of oil across the bowl and lowered his dough tenderly into it, the creased side up, because then he slipped his hand under the body of the dough and turned it over so that the oil formed a protective coat. And then he could put a towel over it, and let it rise, and grow.

On lazy days, like this, he liked to take it with him where he went, like a baby that might wake if it sensed its parent had left. He hooked it under one arm and went to see what books Yusuf had brought him, and what he might have as a comfort read, a beach read. Yusuf usually got their comfort reads out of the classics section, because things comfortable and familiar to them were old and strange to these modern mayfly people. And unfortunately, in Chicago that meant English.

He hated English, with no particular passion except that it was a lingua franca he did not know. Well, and the idioms. And the strange elision of the subjunctive. And of every other familiar signpost at which Nicolò might remember how to decline or conjugate a word. He wasn’t a natural polyglot like Yusuf or Andromache, and he objected to every new language that crossed their path, and why couldn’t things be like Arabic that at least tried to stay the same (in some regions, in some contexts*), or at least why couldn’t people have stuck with writing things down in Latin like they had when Nicolò was a boy and still young enough to catch on to languages decently? If everyone was supposed to be best at learning languages before they turned twenty, how much worse must he be after turning nine hundred and twenty? It wasn’t fair that languages kept changing.

He hadn’t had to learn a new language for Liber. Liber had already spoken Latin, and had been huffy about it being the language of education, of books, right up until Yusuf drawled at him in hillbilly Latin he’d learned from Andromache, _We can’t all be book learners_ , and that was that, Sebastien became Liber Discipuli, the educated one. The freedom frighter, and the drinker. How had Nicolò not seen how unhappy he was?

But he wasn’t here to think about Liber, so he picked something older than Liber was. _Dream of the Red Chamber_. They’d been in China when it was written, and like the rest of the country they had played at adding chapters of their own**. Some of them had made it into the modern version, and he liked to play at guessing which bits were whose, now that he could no longer remember. It was a bit of fluff and nonsense, but it was something where he could find his friends in its pages. Yusuf and still-grieving Andromache, laughing at life and its meaning, before Liber had ever been a part of their company.

Yusuf was curled up in the bed, wound tighter than he was when he had Nicolò to curl around. He only partially woke up when he felt Nicolò join him in bed, moaning protest slightly at the light and pressure before he felt the bowl against his side and curled around it, managing to look sarcastic even in his sleep.

They had shared a bed like this many times before: Nicolò sitting up to read or keep watch, Yusuf curled toward his side, the bread in a bowl between them rising from their shared warmth. Yusuf curled a hand around a fistful of Nicolò’s shirt and seemed content with that; Nicolò luxuriated in clear, steady modern light, and held the book one-handed, the other absent-mindedly threading through Yusuf’s curls, and checking once a chapter to see if the bread had started to nudge the towel aside yet. When it did, he set the book aside and nudged Yusuf awake.

“Gnnngghh,” said Yusuf.

“I’m going to depress the bread,” Nicolò said. Yusuf made another outraged, sleepy noise, and Nicolò waited for him, one hand on the back of his neck. Yusuf liked to watch Nicolò press rising bread dough down, had liked it since he had watched Nicolò in a heated debate with a monk a few decades ago, arguing about whether the way one treated yeast was any fair reflection of the way one treated mankind.

It had been a silly argument, but Nicolò liked silly arguments sometimes, small things to get fully emotionally invested in; and this monk was willing to argue it with him in Latin, in which he could express himself properly. Liber had bet Nicolò that he knew more about bread than the monk, and then had the gall to roll his eyes when they got into an argument and forced him to adjudicate it.

Yusuf struggled awake and his eyes started to uncross, to focus and take in the light, and Nicolò’s book, and the bread rising between them.

“You’re going to press it down?” he asked in Arabic. Nicolò nodded, and Yusuf propped himself up on an elbow. Nicolò reached over and folded the cloth back as if it covered a baby or a sacrament on an altar, but when he spread his hand over the risen dough and began to press, he watched Yusuf’s eyes. As much as Yusuf liked to watch Nicolò be gentle with the bread, Nicolò liked to watch him watch, to see moment when his eyes rounded and every bit of tension went out of his body and he became limp with love. It was only a few seconds, and then Nicolò had to get up and deal with the bread, but he pressed a kiss to Yusuf’s temple first.

“You torture me,” Yusuf grumbled, or Nicolò suspected this was what he said, blurred as it was with sleepiness. “If you would stop baking at night, I could write you the poem you deserve…”

“Go back to sleep,” Nicolò told him, but Yusuf was already sinking down and pulling the covers over his head. Nicolò took the bread rising bowl (still a ridiculous idea), switched out the light, and went back into the kitchen.

The first thing he did was check the walkie-talkie, as if it could have left some message. Nile would not thank him for waking her if he tried to send a message to her now, but if she were in real trouble she would not have stopped buzzing him for help. Or he liked to think so, and not about gas and grenades in the night and waking up helpless in a van…

The bread needed tending. He tipped it out onto its floured surface and let it rest, puttering about the kitchen and cleaning implements while he waited. Baking bread did take quite a number of dishes, and he was done at least with the mixing bowl and the rising bowl now.

He found the temperature gun while he was putzing, and shot the bread dough with it, but it didn’t register as any temperature higher than the rest of the room. He shrugged, set it down again, and set about the business of separating the bread into two loaves, folding them over until they were loaf shaped, brushing them with milk as if he could brush away any remaining unpleasant thoughts that way, and sprinkling them with flakes of barley.

He had told Yusuf over and over that he could bake with whatever grains were convenient, that the oats that went into the bread were fine as a topping, and still every time Yusuf came back with barley flakes, would spend an extra hour combing the city for them as if they were the only grain that would do. As if the barley scattered over the top meant anything, except that he was fond of Nicolò, and even when he was sleeping Nicolò could feel his love just looking at those loaves.

He twitched the towel over them to stop the smile growing at the corner of his mouth. It had some sort of novelty slogan on it, and he could tell by the pattern that it was probably cute, but he didn’t feel like reading the English just now. Yusuf could tell him what it said in the morning, or Andromache more likely - she would tease him when she found the bread.

He took the walkie-talkie with him to the bedroom this time, just in case, and climbed back into bed with Yusuf to read. Yusuf felt the depression in the bed and rolled nearer, draped an arm over him and groaned something unintelligible in any language. Nicolò patted his shoulder and told him to go back to sleep, and turned back to puzzling over where Andromache’s hand came in to the story of Jia Baoyu, and if he would ever be able to figure this out without reading it in the original.

When he got up the next time, he could tell from standing next to the oven that it was cheaper than the stone Yusuf had brought him to put in it. The heat was leaking out already. He frowned at it as if he could shame it into behaving, then swiped the gun off the counter and shot it twice. Well, it certainly seemed to be hot enough.

This particular baking stone was not large enough for both loaves of bread, at least not after their second rise, so he picked one up by the parchment paper underneath it and laid it into the oven along with its ovenproof bowl, and sat down at the table this time. The baking process involved a great deal more interaction, and he had no desire to be up and down, disturbing Yusuf every time he got in or out of bed.

Instead he took the gun Yusuf had obtained that morning - the real gun, that fired bullets, not temperature-sensing lasers - and disassembled it, making sure everything was clean and aligned and functioning the way he expected. He usually had to make minor adjustments to the guns they obtained on the fly. Every so often Yusuf would find him an honest-to-god crossbow and he would get to tune that up in proper Genoese style. One day this would happen while Nile was here, and he would get to give her his lecture on crossbow teams and maintenance, and Yusuf would watch the two of them and laugh and flutter his eyelashes, and Liber would not be there to roll his eyes and complain about Nicolò talking endlessly about crossbows again.

Half way through the baking process, he took the water out; a little later he replaced it with some of that ridiculously luxurious aluminum foil, imagine, tearing _aluminum_ sheerly for the vanity of getting a slightly prettier loaf. The wastefulness of it boggled him. He could bring himself to making a sheet of it to cover the bread, but he couldn’t bring himself to not reuse that sheet, not just for the bread, but for everything he cooked for the rest of the week, until the aluminum was wrinkled and torn beyond use. It had happened before. It would happen again.

When the last timer ended, he reached for an oven mitt first, to pick the loaf up and knock it as he had for centuries. And then he remembered the gun and swore. He had the loaf in his hands already, but he managed to fumble it into one hand and reach sideways for the gun, the heat from the oven washing over him as he held the loaf at arm’s reach and shredded it with a laser machine gun fire. It seemed to be 198 F, which meant about as much to Nicolò as if it had been in Kelvin. When he knocked on it, it sounded good.

Well, he could tell Yusuf he had used the gun for its intended purpose. He slipped the loaf onto the cooling rack, and reached for the second.

Andromache was in the doorway to the kitchen. If he were less accustomed to her sudden appearances, he would have yelped.

“You couldn’t be bothered to help when I was struggling?” he demanded instead.

“You seemed to be managing,” she said. “You’re letting the oven cool.”

He kicked the oven door closed. Oven like that, it could wait a few minutes before it was ready to take on another loaf. Andromache circled around the table in the kitchen, and Nicolò tried not to retreat or bristle. Tried and failed. He knew how menacing Andromache could be, and now when she was not even trying he was having trouble forgetting. Wound up about something, or more than one thing. He had thought the bread was helping.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“I smelled something good,” she said. “Can I…?” She gestured to the bread knife.

“ _No_ ,” Nicolò growled, and wrinkled his nose as he realized she had teased him out of being afraid of her. But she would have collapsed the bread if she had tried to cut it so soon, and it was still his to protect.

“Have you slept yet?” she asked, more seriously. Nicolò shrugged and shook his head. “I can bake the second loaf of bread.”

“Another hour won’t kill me,” said Nicolò. “Someone had to watch the…” He circled a hand and gestured at the little pink walkie-talkie.

“You could have slept with it. Even Yusuf would have woken if it crackled,” she said.

“You overestimate him,” he said.

“You underestimate yourself,” she answered. “Why are you awake, Nicolò?”

“I keep thinking about Liber,” he admitted, and there it was again, staring him in the face: That they hadn’t even bothered to use Liber’s name, that they hadn’t even noticed the misery in his nickname.

“We can call him if you like,” said Andromache. Nicolò tried not to gawp at her.

“That simple? One whimper and you’ve given in?” he asked.

“I don’t have a lot of time left to hold grudges,” she said, and he’d been so caught up in not fretting about Nile by not-fretting about Liber that he’d forgotten they had

Andromache to worry over now, that Andromache was someone they could worry over and not about.

“He needs…” Nicolò began. Andromache held a hand up.

“I know what your Catholicism is telling you, you’ve told me about your deity often enough,” she said. “I’m telling you, if you want to call him, we can.”

I want to, Nicolò thought. He missed Liber, missed walking past him while he and Booker argued about whatever sport they were on now, missed making him French treats and being told his baking was not worthy of a dog, missed the sense of him holding down whatever corner of a room he was in, sturdy and new as a peg in a Shaker coffee table.

“Not now,” he said instead, miserable over it. “He needs time. Maybe not a hundred years, but for now he is just wallowing. He needs time to forgive himself and build his life anew. He needs to think he has a hundred years to do so.”

He walked past Andromache to open the oven door, but she blocked his way with a hand.

“And I?” she asked, and there was an actual, honest-to-God tremble in her voice. “If I wanted to call him?”

“I would be on the phone with Copley now, to get his number,” said Nicolò, and picked up the edges of the parchment paper. “I would find us travel tickets or stow us away in the holds of ships, and I would speak every word of English necessary to bring us to him, if that is what you needed.”

He settled the bread in the oven to his satisfaction, and added the little dish of water to care for it. When he closed the oven door, Andromache was standing by the counter with her weight askew.

“That is what I needed to hear,” she said, her voice husky.

“Oh, Andromache,” said Nicolò, and gathered him to her, and felt her hand settle against his neck after an uncommon moment’s hesitation, right where he had held Yusuf’s earlier that night. “It’s all right to be scared.”

He could hear what she didn’t say: that there were so many things that could happen, that she had never had to worry about before, that she had always assumed she would die in battle and that would be that, no fuss, no worry, no long-drawn-out years wondering what would happen if she drank too much or ate too little salad or if her brothers-in-arms fussed over her like an invalid, or how she could mark her last years as significant when her first thousands had already contained so much. Things Andromache would never be able to say aloud, and that Nicolò had already worried over.

“Which part of _Dream of the Red Chamber_ did you write?” he asked. Andromache laughed against him, shaking in his arms and he could feel it in her belly, the way she didn’t do things by halves even when they were little puffs of air.

“You know, I don’t remember anymore,” she said. “Wasn’t some of it lost? Maybe none of it.”

“Useless,” Nicolò declared her. “I should find a task for you.” He pulled back and reached across the counter without looking, fingers curling around the little pink rectangle in the corner against the wall. “Can you watch the bread for me?” he asked, pressing it into her hands. “I should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” said Andromache, holding the toy like it was Nile’s immortal life, which in some ways it was. “No problem, Nicolò. I have six thousand years of experience.”

“Just don’t burn the buns,” said Nicolò, and went to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I do not speak Arabic ( _yet_ ), so my understanding of the exact cultural context of the ways in which it is encouraged not to evolve is small and uninformed; if you know more than I do, please let me know! I would like to ask further questions about the word for 'atom', and how physicists _survive_ , and also correct whatever misimpressions I may have given in this fic.
> 
> **I cannot recall whether I am thinking of the right Chinese novel. I do recall very much disliking _Dream of the Red Chamber_ , so to be clear, this is not a recommendation.
> 
> There are further notes about the breadmaking process around the next chapter; but they are, largely, about bread, not factual accuracy.


	2. The Recipe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this is the bread Nicolò makes! Why does he make this bread? Because it's the only one I can get to come out right.
> 
> It _is_ historical bread - I got it from someone who got it from _Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England_ , a cookbook I have never seen nor read. I cannot vouch for how similar to that this recipe remains.
> 
> The measurements below are in American units. I... could convert them to international, upon request.
> 
> The instructions below are arranged in what I find to be the most convenient and efficient order. YMMV; I do always get the oats oversoaked.
> 
> NOTE: It takes me about 5 hours to bake this. It's not all hands-on time, but it does take intermittent attention. If you're going to get into it, make sure you have that time lined up. (I have done it af

**Ceilidh Oat Bread**  
Ætena Hlaf - Adapted from _Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England  
_ Time needed: 5 hours _  
_

1 c milk (rice milk works)  
1 c rolled oats

2 1/4 t yeast  
1/2 c warm water (100-115º, or what feels really nice on the inside of your wrist)

6 T Crisco  
1/3 c honey (I’m still messing with this - 1/2 c makes the bread a bit too sweet for me, but 1/4 results in slightly over-dry bread)  
2 t salt  
1 c water  
2 eggs, beaten

8/3 c whole wheat flour  
3.5 c bread flour

Additional milk, oats (or barley flakes) for the top/crust

Recommended kitchen toys: baking stone, parchment paper, tin foil, small oven-proof dish for water, thermometer (I use a meat thermometer)

* * *

Scald milk (heat until small bubbles form at edges of pan). Pour over oats and let soften during the next step.  
Dissolve yeast in water.

In a mixing bowl (electric mixer is A+; will rise in separate bowl):  
Melt the crisco in a measuring cup and empty into this bowl. Use this cup to measure the honey, and the honey will come out easily. Add the salt/water/eggs as well, then thoroughly mix in the oats and milk.  
Add dissolved yeast and mix. Gradually stir in flours until blended.

Turn onto a floured surface and knead until bread consistency, approximately 8-10 minutes. Check for what is _right_ \- elasticity and small bubbles forming under the surface of the dough. (Unfortunately, what is _right_ is something that I had to see to understand. 'Bubbles' is not quite the right word, but there's pockets of, oh, like an unpopped blister but in delicious bread form.)

 **Rise 1:** Lightly grease the bowl the bread will rise in, and turn the dough into it. Turn it over once, so that bread has a _thin_ layer of oil to protect it from drying out. Cover the bowl with a cloth or cling wrap and let rise until it doubles in size.  
Note: You can turn the oven on to its lowest setting, then turn it off and let the dough rise in there, if warm spaces are hard to come by. This will accelerate the rising, at risk of drying out the top of the dough, but it worked well for me.  
“Punch” down the center of the dough and turn it onto a floured surface. Cover with the towel/cling wrap and let rest for five minutes.  
Shape the dough into two loaves - make them very even so the cooking time is even; weighing helps, but is also just A Nice Gadget. A lot of the measurements above were originally in ounces. Fold formally for approximately 1 rotation.

 **Rise 2:** This is a good time to transfer the loaves to parchment paper for them to bake on. When they are where you want them, brush them with milk and sprinkle with rolled oats/barley flakes.  
Cover with the towel/cling wrap and let rise until doubles, about 45 minutes. This is a good time to preheat the oven to 375º so it gets nice and evenly toasted and whatever baking stone you are using gets properly warm - so do not try to let it rise in a cooling oven.  
Preheat oven to 375º.

 **Baking:** Score loaf, if desired. Slide the loaf onto the stone, leaving it on the parchment paper. This helps avoid deflating the dough during transfer - A+ idea in my book. Otherwise, sprinkle the baking stone with cornmeal before loading it with dough.  
 _Total baking time:_ 35-40 minutes.  
 _Recommended process:_ Insert loaf as well as a small ovenproof dish with some water in it. Leave this in for 10 minutes (helps with texture of bread), remove water dish and bake straight for 10 minutes, then add a layer of tin foil (mostly for vanity). I have been considering going to 20 minutes with water in.  
The internal temperature of the bread, measured with a thermometer, should be 200 degrees when it’s finished. I thought this was silly at first, but I wound up really loving my thermometer and the guarantee that the bread will be finished baking when I take it out. And I don't have 900 years to figure out what bread sounds like when it's done, so I will stick with loving my thermometer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crisco is the lard Yusuf was confusing Nicolò with in the fic. I've done this with butter and it was just as good, but if you use salted butter mind the salt balance.
> 
> I don't have an infrared thermometer like the one Yusuf gifts to Nicolò, and in these times of pandemic, they're about impossible to lay one's hands on. If I ever do get my mitts on one, I'll correct the measurements in the fic.
> 
> Neither do I have a bread rising bowl. I am with Nicolò on this one, it seems a ridiculous gadget to clog one's kitchen with, but my sister swears by it. She also bakes bread in a dutch oven. And can get more than one bread recipe to come out right.
> 
> The priest Nicolò argued with about bread exists, or existed, in real life. I have never read that cookbook either, so I don't know who it is or any more than that we had a discussion about the ways we invite violence into our life, and now I enjoy being gentle with my bread, and reserve my kitchen violence for peeling garlic.


End file.
